I've just about finished the software for an arcade game I'm writing. I'll be building the cab next.Any chance of some feedback regards game play etc? anything I might be missing? is it too difficult? etcIt's called Alien Swarm and it requires Java.There's a high score list that's shared globally so feel free to have a shot!

Also, did you happen to use sound effects from EV NOVA? (Escape Velocity)

Thanks for the feedback, I wasn't expecting a reply for days!

I use the DOH sounds to simply to tell the player that they might of made a mistake while playing ie they've taken too long to clear a screen etc. I know that most games don't tell you when you could have done something better but I thought I'd try a little innovation! I found the sound effects all over the web, mostly from free sound libraries. If anyone's any good at making sound effects and thinks they can make better sounds then I'll happily add them in.

I think it's pretty fun, played a few waves. Didn't download it tho, any chance of making the controls customizable or the MAME standard? Also, 2p mode/cocktail flipping mode? I like my shooters oriented vertically also. Keep after it!

I think it's pretty fun, played a few waves. Didn't download it tho, any chance of making the controls customizable or the MAME standard? Also, 2p mode/cocktail flipping mode? I like my shooters oriented vertically also. Keep after it!

It should work with the mame standard controls as well ie the control key will fire, cursor for movement, p pauses, any other key does the shields (if you have them). I'm not so sure whether the Nuke button (N) is a mame button but few people manage to get high enough scores to earn the nukes anyway. I hadn't thought about a 2 player mode but if it proves popular then I could add this - I half wondered about having both players on screen at the same time and firing away at the same aliens - not sure how that would work though in real life.

I didn't understand the vertical comment I'm afraid. I'm also not sure whether you could put it in an arcade as it stands - I was planing on making it into an application with no edges to the window and making it enlarge to full screen (still with the low res screen though).

Wasn't paying attention to score. Sorry. I'll play again later and let you know.

Look at Galaga, for example, it's screen is taller than it is wide. It's vertically oriented. Yours his wider than it is long, which isn't necessarily bad, just off the standard for old school shooters (that being what you were going for).

I do turn based two player rather than simulataneous but either could work I suppose.

had a quick go, got 53000 level 7...................I liked the homer simpson doh when I lost my last life.it was pretty good but maybe a super shot charge by holding down fire button would be cool like in 19xx war against destiny.and how bout getting power ups for different or more powerfull weapons..................I know these things have been done in other shooters but I think these things are the basis of a good shooter.just a thought.im very impressed with what you've done so far, I wouldn't even know where to start

The DOH sound seems to get a vote each way so I guess I'll keep it for now. The problem with many games is that it's difficult to learn how to play them well, you always assume that what you're doing is the best approach. I thought I'd try the DOH (Homer Simpson) sound because it would indicate that you could of done something slightly better. I did experiment with showing messages but it's difficult reading text while trying to fight off the alien hordes! Perhaps I should add an option to turn these particular sounds off? [EDIT] I will add this option.

The weapon system can be powered up by shooting the red motherships and then hitting the "weapon" upgrade option. It starts by just firing more quickly, next time it will cool down more quickly after firing, then faster projectiles, then double strength projectiles which are useful against the green meanies. It takes a bit of practice being able to shoot a red mothership and then carefully select your power up - what usually happens is you're spraying bullets everywhere, hit a red mothership and then accidentally hit the weakest option presented to you or sometimes you hit another red mothership before you even get a chance to pick your power up - obviously doing either of these will earn a DOH sound If you ever get to 200K then "super" options appear as power ups.

The weapon super option allows the fire button to almost be held down continuously (it will over heat eventually though). This option is a great one to get.

The shields super option makes your shields pop up automatically when ever an bullet strikes you. It also allows you to shoot back while your shields are up.

The nuke option is simply earns you a nuclear weapon that can be launched to destroy everything on one screen. You can collect up to 3 nukes. They make a great sound as they launch.

53K should just put you on the high score list! I hope you added your name. [EDIT] Actually I don't see any new scores in the hall of fame - did it ask you to input your name? was the method of name input obvious (it uses old school left, right and fire to pick letters)? were you connected to the web at the time? I'm just a bit worried that my high score storage has died.

A vertically orientated screen might be difficult to add at this stage. I'll have a think about what that would add or subtract from the game play.

2p turn based should be quite straightforward to add. I'd need to add mame controls to decide number of players but that's relatively easy. The only hassle is when you have two strong players then there might be a 10 min wait between turns. I suppose this is true for any game though.

I'm glad everyone enjoys it. I was a little worried that it might be looked down upon as a home made game. I'm planning on putting it into it's own dedicated cabinet next - I just have to find where I placed my saws and drills. I'm not sure how the game would get called from mame but I guess I'll have to do some research on this. It's great getting feedback (and hearing your scores!) as it tells me what I should change.

an option to use Mame control keys only and forcing games to require credits to play

I haven't had any requests for changes to game play so I assume that's OK at the moment. I have noticed that the high scores are showing all the scores for one player while they should only show the top score - I'll change this shortly. I'd love to see the game on folks cabinets but I'll probably need to store high scores locally as well as chosen options before this becomes a reality. If anyone has further thoughts then I'll obviously consider them.

general comments.. (I've thought about doing similar myself in the past)

IMHO people aren't going to want to use it in a cab unless it acts more like an arcade game

by that, i mean has an attract cycle (demo play, title screen, demo play, title screen etc.) and takes 'coins' (jumping to the title screen when you insert a coin etc.) Also ideally you'd have some kind of fake 'service mode' where the settings can be changed! (coinage levels, lives, difficulty, attract sound on/off, freeplay on/off as your bare minimum)

if you look at something like Phoenix it gives details of the enemies during the attract loop, this is also kinda important for a classic arcade game, right now you have all the details on a webpage, a cabinet does not have a webbrowser to view that, so you just want a brief line about each enemy and powerup displayed during the attract loop.. maybe different demo screens using the different enemy types with a description at the top, so somebody watching the machine alone could pick it up.

also not convinced that many people will be putting Java on their cabs..

you also need some kind of pre-load system, there is a noticable *pause* the first time it does certain things (eg the first time you move) as if it's loading / initializing something, which is bad.

also, if people are going to run it on cabs it needs to be full-screen, no windows borders etc.

finally, whatever the link file you have is (.jnlp) it doesn't seem to be recognized as a standard file or auto-open on a Windows 7 with Java installed. I had to look in the file and get the address of the .jar.

all in all I think it's a pretty decent idea if there is a selection of 'free' software out there, perfectly designed for use in cabs because it gives people a better option than shipping them with MAME installed, which we're not too keen on! Study some actual arcade games, and you'll see why this doesn't really feel like an arcade game, a lot of it is in the overall way it's packaged / presented even if the core mechanics are of an arcade game.

Attract screen : I'll look into this and try something similar. If you don't touch the controls then the game will take you through controls, high scores, hints etc but perhaps this isn't obvious or quick enough.

Java : it's a java program so I don't have an option here. Perhaps it could be cross compiled into an exe but I've never tried this.

Pre-load : this might depend on the hardware. It should try and pre-load stuff but maybe your hardware is a little older than mine. Is this a common issue?

Full screen : it will be full screen with no border though the resolution won't change.

JNLP : this is pretty standard for web start programs in java. I guess if it's on a cab then you'd call the jar file anyway.

Free software for cabs : I like the idea of people enjoying the game on their own cabs and that's what it was written for. However if the software is being used to help sell cabs then I think it's fair that a small payment is made to cover the time it takes to write this stuff.

Mike

PS did you get anywhere with your game or was it just at the idea stage?

Attract screen : I'll look into this and try something similar. If you don't touch the controls then the game will take you through controls, high scores, hints etc but perhaps this isn't obvious or quick enough.

Wasn't obvious no, it felt like I'd just inserted a coin and pressed start without being prompted because it granted me control of the game. Current behavior is fine if you were running in 'PC mode' but if you wanted an 'Arcade mode' it isn't really arcade behavior.l

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Java : it's a java program so I don't have an option here. Perhaps it could be cross compiled into an exe but I've never tried this.

Don't worry too much about my criticism here. Java is widely used, even things like Minecraft use it, and I consider jDownloader a very useful piece of software. Reasons I don't like it.a) It requires a plug-in, b) it is a HUGE source of security issues (especially if you fail to update the plugin) c) the installer / updater attempts to install bad crap on your PC, like the Ask toolbar which is practically a virus it digs so deep into your system, very immoral to include.Therefore I try to avoid advising people to install it, especially the less computer literate. The last place I worked moved away from Java altogether because of c)

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Pre-load : this might depend on the hardware. It should try and pre-load stuff but maybe your hardware is a little older than mine. Is this a common issue?

Well it's my MAME development box, 3ghz C2D, 16gb RAM, so not exactly cutting edge, but no dinosaur and definitely better than what most people will be running in cabs (see the countless threads about people still trying to run 10 year old versions of MAME!) Can't say for sure what the problem is, just that it seemed to pause to load (or allocate?) stuff. This was in both IE10 and Firefox.

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Full screen : it will be full screen with no border though the resolution won't change.

That's ok, if you want a retro look then you don't want to go TOO high resolution anyway ;-)

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JNLP : this is pretty standard for web start programs in java. I guess if it's on a cab then you'd call the jar file anyway.

Um, ok, I wonder what creates the association then, because I have Java installed and all I got in both FF and IE was 'this link is not associated with any application'

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Free software for cabs : I like the idea of people enjoying the game on their own cabs and that's what it was written for. However if the software is being used to help sell cabs then I think it's fair that a small payment is made to cover the time it takes to write this stuff.

Well your licensing model is up to you, you could easily offer them as 'free for personal use' With different pricing details for commercial use / inclusion with cabinets. I think the chance of anybody paying a significant sum for something like this is low, but if relative to the cost of the cab it's cheap for the manufacturer to provide a legal game they might consider it.

Just thought I'd leave some feedback anyway, it you want to provide a more authentic arcade experience you should study the actual behavior of a number of arcade games, shouldn't be too hard to create your own little reusable 'Arcade engine / library' to provide those features to any other software you develop.

I'm currently looking at making it more mame cabinet friendly. My aim is to have the game running in a cab after all. I'm looking into your other suggestions. The only reason why I mentioned a price was that you were sounding like you sold cabinets and wanted a bunch of work doing to help you shift more cabs - I was simply pointing out that perhaps it was a little unfair to profit from someone else s work. I obviously misread your comment

I'm currently looking at making it more mame cabinet friendly. My aim is to have the game running in a cab after all. I'm looking into your other suggestions. The only reason why I mentioned a price was that you were sounding like you sold cabinets and wanted a bunch of work doing to help you shift more cabs - I was simply pointing out that perhaps it was a little unfair to profit from someone else s work. I obviously misread your comment

No, I do MAME development, nothing to do with the hardware / selling cabinets.

There are people who make and sell cabinets, MAME isn't a legal option for them because we explicitly say NO COMMERCIAL USE (we have our reasons) so alternatives are nice.

The key factor is making a game that can operate as an arcade game, rather than an arcade style game. There aren't many of the former, whereas for the latter there are literally hundreds of flash 'arcade style' games already out there, the market for those is absolutely saturated. The difference is a real arcade game can stand there 24/7 and draw people in, take their money etc. It's also important it doesn't crash, or if it does then it reboots properly with no human intervention etc. ;-)

This type of project is actually where I think something like the Raspberry Pi would be *very* interesting too. While it's a completely pants solution for a MAME box due to the limited power (and I've slammed people several times for suggesting it) it would actually be the *ideal* platform for a bunch of original 'classic style' arcade video games that could operate as arcade games in a cabinet. Then it would actually become an interesting,cheap and legal option for cab builders. If this type of thing on a larger scale takes your fancy it is something you might want to consider.

77774, flubbed two bonus ships right when I needed them. The shield bonus is pretty much worthless for me. I'd rather a single shot protection that I can fire though and just have one rather than three. Fun.

77774, flubbed two bonus ships right when I needed them. The shield bonus is pretty much worthless for me. I'd rather a single shot protection that I can fire though and just have one rather than three. Fun.

Management of the bonus ships is key to getting high scores. To be fair though, 80K ain't bad. Later in the game there is the option of super shields that switch on automatically and allow you to fire through. Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for playing.

Nice little game - the difficulty seems to build fairly evenly keeping it challenging - one suggestion would be to randomize the bonus placement as having the extra life and weapon upgrade always come up in the same location makes it fairly easy to plan the use of the bonuses where having it random would make you plan the shots better instead of just getting to the proper place before taking out the bonus ship with widespread firing (or randomize after a certain level is reached) or perhaps make the bonuses a moving target perhaps another ship type that moves across the screen and then disappears off the other side rather than being static in the same positions. Also agree with the shield being fairly useless since you can not shoot with it active and you do not know exactly how long it lasts making planning your escape difficult (perhaps have the shield take a specific number of hits for you rather than being timed and give only one shield (perhaps have a countdown of the number of remaining hits on the shield and make the shield hit area a bit wider (maybe 150% circumference of the current area) than the gun so it is harder to keep things from hitting it.

I haven’t really looked into it so I don’t know what (if anything) is available out there in terms of newly developed games that are cabinet friendly, but I just love playing arcade-style games with arcade sticks and buttons, so I can never have enough.

I will say that I agree 100% with Haze’s suggestions about making it “feel” like an old arcade game, especially with the attract mode and “coin up” functionality. The more seamlessly the game falls in amongst the rest of the games on a MAME cabinet, the better.

JDFan - an impressive score The difficulty does continue to climb even past that score (and on past a million!). I can't quite picture anyone getting there though.

Le Chuck - I just saw your cabs - I'm totally in awe - especially of the Barrel of Kong.

Haze - I'm looking into altering the game so it will function as pure arcade game.

I'm putting in the changes that you guys have asked for:

Mame keys (coin, start game etc) - I have this working in development. You need to press P to pause the game and select mame controls with coins.

Shield - I have changed this in development so you can shoot through the shield.

Attract screen - I've made some big changes to this so it hopefully better suits an arcade cab. I'll admit I'm finding the music side of things a bit difficult though so if anyone has a better free music loop feel free to get in touch. You can turn off the music via a setting.

I'll release the above tonight. I'll probably wait for some feedback (just to check I haven't introduced any bugs) before adding:

Full screen - I'll turn it into a full screen game (same res though) and remove the screen border. This will need user permission to run.

Le Chuck - I just saw your cabs - I'm totally in awe - especially of the Barrel of Kong.

Wrong Arcade Icon, bro.

Normally yes, but in this case not

I've released the new version of Alien Swarm. The major parts that have changed are the attract screen. There's intro music (which is why the file size is now 3mb). You can now shoot through the shields and all the mame keys work fine (if you press p (for pause/settings) then change the controls to mame). Enjoy (or not)!

DOH (to keep you happy). I did click LeChuck's sig, where it said all our builds, and that was one that came up. To be fair all the cabs were stunning but I just liked the simplicity and usefulness of that particular cab ... it's a bar table, you can spill your beer on it and you can play Donkey Kong. And talking of playing games, has anyone tried the new version out and would it go in a cab better now? obviously it would need to be full screen and load the mame settings automatically.

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Chris John Hunter

I've seen that type before somewhere. You might want to create some .bad filestext files with positions for baddies to move to and from so you get nice varied waves.I can give you advice on that if you want any. Bit of AI would be cool too

It's written in Java (as mentioned in the initial post).Did you find the game too easy then? can I ask what sort of score you got?It's very kind of you to offer advice - what sort of arcade (or PC) games have you written in the past?Mike

Chris John Hunter

Mike mate, port it to another language. I hate Java. And its format support sucks. Also without it you can have proper menus and options screens.

But its a decent little shooter. The sound is really annoying. Samples are low quality but the gameplay is awesome. The graphics could do with some more frames for the baddie ships. Individual ones. I like how they change colour like bricks in Arkanoid for a few shots before dying.

Also, it would be great to see the actual powerups and maybe show them down the bottom . I like it I really do.

I got to level 9. I didn't lose a life once until then and then I lost them all with those ships with the invisibility cloakes around them.

The baddies movement/lines get better as it goes on. But it still needs looking at cos sometimes a ship sits a third of the way along the screen and about 2/3rds down and just sits there.

The difficulty level needs looking at like I say 1-8 it was getting harder but 9 was madness. Christ knows how John managed level 23? But then I didn't notice I could auto fire until level 9 either.

Oh and I have just remembered there was another weapon I didn't use that at all.

This is CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM mate I loved it. But I do this for a living so I had to be honest.

Also id do away with any baddie that cant be killed. Hardcore gamers will hate that.

It's funny how we had a post a short while back stating how smoothly the difficulty of the game progresses I think as you gain experience at the game you'll find you'll do that little bit better. The baddies with the shields will simply try to smoother you while the others gang up on you. You can't hurt them while their shields are up. The shields do turn off on a regular basis which allows you to kill them or you can just avoid getting smothered. As the game progresses you'll meet different types of aliens, the behaviour of the aliens also changes as the game goes on and you'll certainly find them more aggressive. Auto fire is vital as are the weapon power ups are vital to stay alive. I have no big issue with adding AI into the mix (I write chess programs as well) but I suspect a players life would be very short if the little sods were intelligent as well as belligerent.

When you manage to get to the super power ups then these are shown at the bottom ie nukes and auto shields etc. The problem with the weapon power ups is that there are so many of them and it's difficult showing that sort of information in a small space. I'm not really sure a normal player has much time to read dials etc. I actually wondered whether anybody ever looked at the time bar and weapon temp gauge in the top right. My guess is they probably don't.

Some people like a particular language and others hate it. It's certainly not a language I program in professionally but it does allow you to produce a wide variety of applications that are accessible from the web as well as installable on folks PC's or cabs. I was really aiming for an original feel arcade game so it doesn't matter too much about menus etc. I actually wanted a moderately low res game to mimic the ones I used to play (when I had the money).

Nobody else has commented on the invincible grey motherships. I thought it added a slightly different dimension to the game, a bit like having different pieces on a chess board. They certainly could be killable but then they wouldn't be that much different to the large green motherships which would make the grey ones a bit pointless. Perhaps you should give the game a few more tries and then, if you still feel the same, I'll think about making the grey mothers a little more vulnerable.

Chris John Hunter

Sod it. I just made a bunch of comments went to post and I was logged out!

What I would say is, if it were in another language there would be no confirm security Java screen to interupt play. You have the GAMEPLAY SPOT ON it has that oldschool arcade feel. And its addictive and lots of fun.

I would actually make them occasionally killable so that pro gamers get that extra satisfaction knowing they can do it and others cant. I remember Jak and Daxter and the satisfaction I got with 105%(101?) complete.

I remember playing Bubble Bobble I got almost to the end and I found out I had to play 2player to win. So couldn't complete it.

DOH (to keep you happy). I did click LeChuck's sig, where it said all our builds, and that was one that came up. To be fair all the cabs were stunning but I just liked the simplicity and usefulness of that particular cab ... it's a bar table, you can spill your beer on it and you can play Donkey Kong. And talking of playing games, has anyone tried the new version out and would it go in a cab better now? obviously it would need to be full screen and load the mame settings automatically.

Yeah, it's confusing. Arcade Icons is a consortium of builders. We play in the same sandbox for certain benefits. Joel did Kong. I'm mostly wrapped up in R2Emu right now, which is also barrel shaped so I'll call it partial credit. For my builds visit the Compendium.

Actually it was lvl 25 in that game but have practiced a few more times and improved a bit at dodging (still haven't been able to use the shields properly though now that they can be shot through I quess I'll have to download the new version !: ( Not sure what level was in the pic below as it moved to the enter initails screen while I was pasting the below into PS but it was a bit higher than the earlier pic)

Actually it was lvl 25 in that game but have practiced a few more times and improved a bit at dodging (still haven't been able to use the shields properly though now that they can be shot through I quess I'll have to download the new version !: ( Not sure what level was in the pic below as it moved to the enter initails screen while I was pasting the below into PS but it was a bit higher than the earlier pic)

Blimey! Well it was a sterling effort from you in any case. I only got to level 9 but my nuke didn't work? Kept wacking N but nothing.

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Yeah, it's confusing. Arcade Icons is a consortium of builders. We play in the same sandbox for certain benefits. Joel did Kong. I'm mostly wrapped up in R2Emu right now, which is also barrel shaped so I'll call it partial credit. For my builds visit the Compendium.

Ah! I was thinking this on Facebook the other day. I was looking at Barrel of Kong and said hang on that's LeChuck's coat of arms arcade

Chris John Hunter

JDFan - an impressive score The difficulty does continue to climb even past that score (and on past a million!). I can't quite picture anyone getting there though.

I prefer games I can complete to ones where its a high score challenge but then once again its opinions. Has anyone ever beat Space Invaders does anyone know if its possible? I got pretty far in Pheonix the other day.

My QUOTE doesn't work again?Its a good game. I only ever seen room for improvement but that's just how my mind works.